Saturday, October 2, 2010

Friday's Book Basket

Ok, so I'm posting this a bit late this week, but I haven't done one the past couple of weeks and we read a few really neat books that I wanted to share with you!

We love Jan Brett books around here. I had a few when I was little and my Mom got some for E a while back. This week we read Annie and the Wild Animals. Annie can't find her cat anywhere, so she is looking for a new pet. She makes corn cakes and leaves them at the edge of the forest. A moose, a bear, and other forest animals come to eat the corn cakes, but Annie doesn't want them for a pet. E loved this story. She kept asking to read about the corn cakes. Jan Brett uses the border illustrations to tell you what is coming up next, so I showed that to E and tried to get her to guess what animal Annie would meet next.

Another favorite this week was Max's Dragon by Kate Banks. Max is looking for rhyming words, which E loves to do. His wagon becomes his dragon and then it takes of into the sky as a cloud. After reading this book we went outside and looked at the clouds. Finding pictures in the clouds is a fun activity that really helps to develop imagination. After that, E has been finding pictures in everything: leaves, her dinner, dust bunnies . . .

The last book I have to share with you is There Was an Old Monster by Rebecca and Adrian Emberly. This is such a cute book, in the style of "There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly." E wasn't sure she wanted to read a monster book, but once we got going and read about how she swallowed ants that had him "dancing in his pants" she was hooked. I think there is a musical version of this book as well, but we haven't checked it out yet.